


Quest of the Cosmic Gunslinger

by Omorka



Series: The Books of the Last Gunslinger [1]
Category: Atop the Fourth Wall, That Guy with the Glasses/Channel Awesome
Genre: Alternate Universe - Space Opera, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-10
Updated: 2015-10-10
Packaged: 2018-04-25 18:28:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,167
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4971724
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Omorka/pseuds/Omorka
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Next-to-the-Last of the Noble Order of Gunslingers has received a prophesy that might save his planet; now, he just has to dodge overpowered fighters, meteor cannons, and robot drones while gathering the allies to carry it out.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Quest of the Cosmic Gunslinger

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Fuzzywezzy's "SciFi AU" fanmix for the TGWTG Reverse Big Bang. It's really more Space Opera/Future Fantasy pastiche with a few cyberpunk-ish elements rather than proper SciFi, for which I apologize. (It's also terribly derivative of Star Wars and The Last Starfighter, and as such let me acknowledge that debt here.) And I'm aware that it ends rather than properly concluding; yes, there will be a sequel/second half coming down the line soon.
> 
> As with the other Channel Awesome stuff I've been doing of late, this is intended to draw on the characters from the CA anniversary movies and the At4W storyline segments, not the RL web personalities who play them (and own them, of course; I'm just flinging sand in their playground).

The landscape around him might as well have been an asteroid-bombarded moon. Thick layers of dust, grey as ash and fine as silt, coated the ground, the smooth-sanded pillars of pale wood that were all that remained of the trees, the occasional mound that might once have been a building’s foundation, and his shoes, until everything was nearly monochrome. Small whorls of it kicked up everywhere he stepped, and every time the wind was more than a faint breath, a dust devil spun up and danced into oblivion.

The Gunslinger sighed. In a way, it was his fault, this blasted moonscape on his beloved planet. Not that he took responsibility for it; no power in the universe could convince him it was anyone’s volition other than their enemy’s. But still, there were courses of action he could have taken that might have prevented it, things he could have done or said that might have at least made it less likely.

One other thing about the dust: it muffled footsteps. A pair of arms slipped around his shoulders as a cheek pressed lightly against his back. “Honey, you didn’t have to come here,” his comrade, wife, and partner in crime said softly into the long braid of his hair.

“I know,” Jaeris sighed. “I just - I needed reminding, I think. I have to remember why I’m doing this.”

She chuckled. “What, the protection of entire population of the planet isn’t enough? Maybe even the galaxy?”

“Not really,” he admitted. He gestured with one hand at what had once been rich farmland, dotted with gardens and orchards. “It’s not just for us. It’s for our whole world, for all the planets he might turn to in the future, for their world-souls. He doesn’t care any more about ecology than he does about freedom or justice; he did this in a heartbeat, and he either knew what would happen, or he didn’t care. He _doesn’t_ care.” Jaeris wiped a streak of dust from his forehead and ended up with it on his sleeve instead. “He doesn’t give a crap about the act of ruling. I finally figured that out last night. He doesn’t really want to make the economy run, or get the trains to run on time, or anything like that. He wants the power, but he doesn’t have a clue how to use it, and he doesn’t give a flying flip that he doesn’t.” He turned to face her, his coat flaring in the still air. “And that’s why we’ve got to stop him, Joanna. It’s not because he oppresses everyone he meets, even though that would be bad enough. It’s because he has a weapon like this, and didn’t save it for his last resort. He’s not just a tyrant; he’s an _irresponsible_ tyrant.”

Her hands pressed against his chest. “I know,” she declared, her voice harsh in the near-silence; the dust swallowed every sound. “Even if the prophesy is a wild-goose chase, I know we’ve got to do something. The Tektopia worlds aren’t much more than factory planets, now. Fighting back the way we have been is getting less and less effective; there’s only a few hundred of us left who aren’t injured. And only the two of us are fully trained Gunslingers, now that Ludens is gone.” She stepped back to look him straight in the face. “I just need to know - why do you have to go alone?”

Jaeris laughed gently. “What, you want to come with me? Hon, you know you’re a better ground tactician than I am, and I’m twice as good as Lise, and she’s the only one other than us left who could strategize her way out of a paper bag,” he said, taking her hands in his. “Someone’s got to stay here, train the others, and keep everyone safe until I get back,” he continued, “and you’re better qualified for that than I am.” He paused. “And the ship only holds three people anyway,” he finished. “If I took you, I couldn’t bring both of the others back, now, could I?”

“I guess not,” she conceded, her fingers tightening around his.

He looked over her shoulder. Despite the devastation, there were a few signs of life, after these many months. Here and there a green bud swelled from still-living wood on the pylons that were the trees’ grave markers. A sprout or two poked up through the dust from well-buried roots. On the upper swells the dust had begun to erode away, exposing occasional expanses of rock and concrete; a lizard scrambled to the top of a flat spot, stuck its tongue out at the sun, then scurried away.

He pressed his lips to her cheek, ignoring the tiny grains that scoured them both. “I’ll be back soon,” he whispered. “I promise.” It wasn’t one he was sure he could keep, and they both knew it, but he was damned well going to try his hardest.

“You better,” she whispered back.

\---

Calling it a three-person ship was a bit of a stretch. The _Stratocaster_ hadn’t originally been meant as a warship, or even a fighter; it was a sleek chrome arrow, built for speed first and fuel efficiency second, with weaponry somewhere around fifth or sixth place and comfort down around twentieth. It was about as small a hull as you could fit a working hyperdrive into, and it was mostly cockpit, with two seats facing outward towards what would have been a windshield if it were meant to operate in atmosphere very often. The back had a tiny galley that could seat a third safely but uncomfortably, and an even tinier head. It wasn’t intended to spend long times between stations; it had no bunks, only seats.

It was the Gunslingers’ last remaining spaceworthy ship. It would have to do.

Jaeris ran through the pre-flight checklist on autopilot. The prophesy had been vague, as they tend to be - “Unite the three near-empty Orders.” Their best guess had been that the Orders in question were three organizations of galactic warrior-peacekeepers that had been thriving a generation ago, but were now all down to a handful of members. One was their own order of Gunslingers, now reduced to two initiated members and the remains of their young dedicants; they were positive about that one. One had to be the Paladins of Zord, now dwindled from a galaxy-wide presence to a single stronghold on their homeworld. Jaeris honestly wasn’t sure what the third one was, although Joanna had made a list of possible ideas.

It was time. Jaeris reached for the radio to signal that he was ready for liftoff, then stopped himself in time. A strong enough radio signal would give away their location before he was ready; instead, he waved through the front windows at the two dedicants poised at the warehouse doors. They slapped the roof control switches and ran for cover.

He waited until the roll-away roof was fully open and the two kids were safely out of the possible blast radius, then brought the ion engines online. The ship hummed with the power underneath it, slowly rising on a column of ionized plasma; as soon as he was clear of the roof, he opened the throttle and the ground dropped away beneath him. Getting out of atmosphere was the most risky part of the enterprise. He knew he’d be seen; the question was, would anyone who saw him have reason to let the enemy know?

He was nearly in the black when the first shot came from the orbital battle station, and the sensors picked up the energy signature in just enough time to take evasive action. The disintegrator beam missed him by tens of meters by a combination of luck and skill; it had a long enough recharge time that the station wouldn’t get another shot. He gave the ion engines as much power as he dared, juking and weaving around their Gauss projectiles. Missiles couldn’t catch the _Stratocaster_ , and he was well out of range for their point-defense lasers, so until the beam charged back up, the Gauss guns were all they had.

He swung wide, and ducked behind the curve of the larger moon; now they didn’t have a straight shot at him at all. The disintegrator was powerful, but it would take more raw energy than the station had to shoot all the way through a moon. If they wanted him, they’d have to send fighters after him, and he hadn’t seen a single launch.

Too easy. Too easy. Did they have a tracker on the ship? Or did they want him to leave? Maybe they thought Joanna would be an easier target without him; boy, did they have another think coming, if that was their plan.

He was nearing the gas giants when he saw it - a singleton fighter, a third the _Stratocaster_ ’s mass and almost as fast, painted glossy black against the eternal starry night of space. Its engines were all of it that was clearly visible, and they were powerful ones. Only ion engines, though; nothing that small could have a working hyperdrive, or survive activating the drive if it did.

“I don’t know which of the last of the Gunslingers you are,” the radio announced, “and I can’t really say I care, either.” The fighter turned to face him; the light from the engines faded to a halo around the night-black ship.

Jaeris’s hands danced across the controls; he didn’t answer. The space jockeys had called this guy General Voice, and swore that he could hypnotize you just by talking to you. Jaeris didn’t believe that, himself, but he also didn’t care to test the theory.

“That’s a great ship,” the Voice continued. “It’ll be a pity to blast it to Hell out here where no one can see it. I’ll record it for posterity, of course, but it’s really kind of a waste of workmanship.”

“Shut up,” Jaeris muttered. The fastest way out of the star’s gravity well was straight up, but then he’d have to kill his velocity vector before activating the hyperdrive, and it would only give him a few seconds of a head start on General Voice and his damn near invisible fighter. Better to keep the vector he had now, in the direction he needed to go, and trust that the _Stratocaster_ ’s engines were good enough to outstrip something that small.

“What, you don’t want to chat?” General Voice teased. “I’ll have you know I’ve been waiting for you out here for weeks. Lord Critic knew you were going to make a move soon, you know; you’ve been running low on resources for more than a month and manpower for even longer.”

“Lucky guess,” Jaeris whispered through gritted teeth. So far the tiny fighter was keeping pace with him, but not gaining. It hadn’t fired yet; the Voice probably didn’t have any beam weapons that wouldn’t bounce off the shields at this range.

Probably.

“So, are you headed to Eta Vulgaris?” the Voice continued to needle. “We’ve got a half a battalion stationed there already. Or the mercenary trade on Chloris I? We can outbid you on every warrior-for-hire in the galaxy.” General Voice chortled gleefully, and a blue laser blazed past the port flank of the ship, glancing harmlessly off the shields. “There’s nowhere you can go where we haven’t already been and either strip-mined it or left it useless. You’re not on a heroic quest; you’re on a roadtrip to nowhere.” A second laser missed the ship by a matter of meters. “And I’m going to give you a speeding ticket.”

Jaeris twiddled a control knob and finally allowed himself to reach for the radio handset. “Then I guess I’d better make sure you can’t catch me, huh?” he said, and stomped on both floor pedals. The third and fourth ion engines roared to life.

“The Hell did those come from?” the radio blurted, and two more laser bursts bounced off the shields. The second was a direct hit, and strong enough to shake the ship through the shielding; Jaeris checked the panel readout - so far they were holding nicely, but too many more of those and he’d have to choose whether to shunt auxiliary power to the shields or the engines.

“Courtesy of the mechanics y’all shanghaied into building troop transports for you,” Jaeris muttered. One of the many things the enemy was not good at was allocating resources, whether sentient or otherwise. It was one of the two main reasons the rebels had survived this long against overwhelmingly superior firepower; the other was Lord Critic’s poor decision-making skills.

Another laser shook the ship, and Jaeris decided to divert a few precious resources to fighting back. The other ship’s shields were probably as good as his own, so destroying it would require turning around, which in turn would mean stopping accelerating - not an option. However, he did have one double Gauss turret that had a 360-degree range of fire; he spun it and took aim on the radar. He’d be firing through his exhaust, which made this trickier, but there were multiple reasons he and Joanna were the last Gunslingers, and this was one of them.

Two bursts, a second apart, low spread. Jaeris turned his attention back to the hyperdrive as the radio erupted: “Hey, what the shit was that?”

“Hot iridium, mostly,” Jaeris said. He was nearly past the orbit of the last of the gas giants; the star’s gravity well didn’t go too far into the Kupier belt. All he had to do was keep up the acceleration for a few more minutes.

Something solid impacted the shields, setting off a half-dozen alarms. Jaeris switched from the panels to the heads-up display; had that been a missile? The shield on the underbelly of the ship was down to 80%. “Missiles don’t go that fast,” Jaeris growled, and fired off another couple of Gauss volleys.

Blue fire exploded halfway between his ship and the Voice’s. “How the fuck did you hit the torpedo?” General Voice snarled.

“I was aiming at you,” Jaeris sneered back. Ion torpedoes were energy-hungry, but much faster than missiles; fortunately, they were also more fragile. And now that he knew what they were, he stood a chance of taking them out before they hit him.

The port underbelly of the ship shuddered again. 60% shields; he couldn’t take too much more of those. The Gauss gun fired again, and another torpedo ate vacuum before getting to him.

General Voice’s ship was closer now, inching up on him. Hopefully that meant he was trying to get into laser range, that he didn’t have too many more of those torpedoes. Another one impacted the ship, on its back shields this time. He could reinforce the shields, but that would take energy away from the hyperdrive capacitor.

Another volley, another explosion. A laser went wide to the right; General Voice was firing wild. Good. Let him get too upset to shoot straight.

“How are you hitting those?” General Voice demanded. “You’re not supposed to be able to do that!”

Once more, Jaeris grabbed the handset. “Haven’t you heard?” he asked, smiling. “I’m the last Gunslinger.” His fingers gripped a slider and slipped it smoothly upwards; the hyperdrive twanged like a guitar string snapping, and space rolled into a cone around him as he jumped past lightspeed.

“There’s nothing that way -” General Voice raged from the speaker, before space collapsed and the radio dissolved into static.

Jaeris leaned back in the pilot’s seat. “Man, Joanna’d kick my ass if she heard me say that,” he chuckled to himself, as the space between stars slipped by. His firearm pulsed gently in agreement at his hip.

\---

Palladium Station wasn’t technically nothing, but as a converted asteroid in a system with no inhabited planets, it was pretty close; it didn’t surprise Jaeris that General Voice hadn’t thought of it. 

It had originally been a lump of metal - iron, nickel, platinum, iridium, and its namesake, mostly - floating in the trailing Lagrange point of a ringed gas giant. When intersystem mining interests had moved in to harvest radioactives from the airless worlds close to the blue-white star, it had been heated until it melted and then blown like glass into a sphere. When it had first been built, it had been spun to create artificial gravity by centrifugal force; it had long been converted to use grav generators, but it still spun, if much more slowly now. The outer surface was shiny but rough, pitted with micrometeorite hits and clusters of docking stations.

All the dirty business of the sector happened in the interior. Palladium Station fell under no planetary jurisdiction, so ever since the fall of the ancient imperial bureaucracy, it was a law unto itself. It was governed by a small oligarchy of mining bosses, and they had passed as few laws as possible, to avoid accidentally interfering with business. Anything that didn’t kill someone who could claim full legal citizenship (either on the station or elsewhere) was pretty much fair game, and even then, they had to catch you.

Jaeris docked the _Stratocaster_ cautiously, allowing the older umbilicals to attach to the belly of the ship and ease it against the station’s hull. This was docking port 247-A-9, according to the markings; better remember that, he noted. He tugged down his hat, unbuttoned his duster, and adjusted his holsters, making his twin pistols as visible as he could.

As he strode out into the station’s airlock, he swiped a credstick through the reader. He didn’t have much, but it would pay for a couple of days’ parking.

The halls up here near the hull were narrow, lit with greenish, flickering light panels; the dull whites of the paint and the exposed metal of the floors felt somehow sterile and slightly dingy at the same time. The causeways overflowed with crowds people of a dozen planetary origins selling anything they thought a visitor might want, from hand meals of various sorts (most of which smelled exactly the same, despite their wildly varying ingredients), to sex acts, to drugs, to fuel, to maps of the station interior. If he didn’t suspect the quality of the maps wasn’t much better than the quality of the food, that last would have tempted Jaeris. Instead, he headed for the closest elevator.

Two levels down, the corridors were much wider and better lit, more like a well-planned shopping arcade than a warren of utilitarian corridors. They were just as crowded, although the people shoving past Jaeris on either side were better dressed. Another turn around the station’s curved architecture, and he was in a hall filled with pre-fab nooks that were one-third market stall and two-thirds office cubicle, most marked with small flashing signs in multiple languages. Jaeris glanced around; he’d been hoping an old acquaintance of his, a bounty hunter-turned assassin who specialized in high-profile political targets, would be at the service market here. He didn’t think he had enough creds to buy her services, but she might at least know something about the other warrior orders.

Well, this was the right location, or had been the last time Jaeris had been here, but no one here looked anything like Darkwolf, nor did he see a sign for her. That didn’t mean she wasn’t here, of course; she was a master of stealth, and that almost certainly went for her place of business as well. But it did mean that either she didn’t want to be found right now, or he was in the wrong part of the station.

“Lost?” asked a curiously accented voice at Jaeris’s elbow. “I could be your guide, for a couple of creds.”

“Don’t need a guide,” Jaeris grunted. “Just need to get my bearings, is all.” He turned to face his accoster, one hand drifting towards his handgun.

For a moment, Jaeris thought he was talking to a kid, but no, the eyes were older than the face and bearing suggested. For that matter, his would-be guide’s posture suggested he was propositioning Jaeris for an entirely different sort of business transaction. The stranger’s eyes widened as he followed Jaeris’s path of motion; his hands flew up, open and empty, in a gesture of surrender. “I don’t want any trouble,” he said, swallowing and backing away. “I just thought -”

“Wait.” Jaeris shifted, glancing up and down the mall. “Is this still the services market?”

“It’s the main one,” his interlocutor replied. “There’s another one a level up on the other hemisphere, but it’s even less nice. What services are you looking for?” He rubbed his fingers together suggestively.

Jaeris sighed and tossed the guy a credchip. “Lupa Darkwolf. Do you know her?”

“Of course I know her,” the other fellow snorted. “Half the station’s either in love with her, or trying to get into her pants, or both. Her booth’s along the back wall, near the back route to the escape pods. She’s out on an assignment, though; probably won’t be back for months.” He pocketed the credchip and studied Jaeris’s coat.

“Damn,” Jaeris growled through gritted teeth. “Guess my timing’s worse than usual.” He turned to head back towards the elevators; he could still trawl for rumors here, but that was better done in one of the bars up towards the airlocks.

“Wait,” his would-be guide interrupted, his eyes flashing in the industrial lighting. “That’s a soul blaster, isn’t it?”

Jaeris’s eyes flared. To all appearances, his two pistols were identical, but this fellow had correctly looked at the one on his right when he’d asked. “Maybe it is, and maybe it ain’t,” he said, exaggerating his drawl. “Who wants to know?”

“Oh, nobody,” said the other fellow, leaning in closer. “But you’re obviously not one of the Paladins; they never leave the Fortress any more, and anyway you’re dressed all wrong. The only other source of soul blasters is the Noble Order of Gunslingers on Mellotron III. And that means - is it over? Has Lord Critic finally taken the planet?”

“Not hardly,” Jaeris snorted. “What, you think my being here means I ran like a dog with my tail between my legs, hiding from that scum?” His scowl deepened, furrowing lines across his brow. “What’s it to you, anyway?”

Suddenly his would-be guide looked both very excited and very nervous. “Talking about it here isn’t safe,” he said, his sandy hair flopping around in disarray as he glanced back and forth. “Lord Critic has ears everywhere. Not good ones, but still.” He gestured with one hand as he headed for what looked like a service door. “Follow me?”

Well, it wasn’t as if Jaeris had a better lead, and this guy seemed to know something about the Paladins of Zord, at least. He trailed behind him down two flights of stairs; the lighting in here was dimmer and redder, and there was no paint or paneling to disguise the steel alloy the walls and floors were made of - probably forged from the original metal of the asteroid, Jaeris realized.

The other fellow pushed open another door and led him out into a room filled with warm, damp air, almost big enough to be mistaken for the outdoors; a huge array of solar lamps rotated overhead. Jaeris recognized rows of lettuce and radishes stretching past them towards a grid packed with pepper and tomato plants. “So the station grows some of its own food,” he realized aloud.

“More of it than you’d think,” his guide agreed. “Most vegetables, some fruits, and there are giant nutrient algae vats towards the north and south poles that provide protein powder for synthetic meat. It’s also part of the air recirculation system and the water treatment system. I work here; got transferred down after a little accident in the loading docks. Most people hate it, but I think it’s rather nice, once you get used to the humidity.”

“It’s quieter than the mercantile floor, anyway,” Jaeris conceded. The only sounds were the buzzing of imported insects and the hissing of the irrigation system. “So, what were you saying about the Paladins, Lord Critic, and my home planet?”

“I was just wondering,” his guide sighed, “whether he was done there or not. I never did figure out why he wanted the planet so badly; I figured it had something to do with the Gunslingers, but he never actually explained.”

“Does he have a reason for any of the planets he conquers?” Jaeris asked, shrugging. Then he realized what his guide had just said. “Wait, do you mean you know Lord Critic _personally_?”

“Knew.” His interlocutor sat down on a water pump housing and dangled his feet; he looked more like just a kid than he had even at first glance. “I used to be his personal gofer. You have to understand; I wasn’t even eighteen yet. I idolized him, and he - well, he used me, like he uses everyone around him. This was back when he was working on taking over the old Tektopia worlds, before he had the three huge battle platforms he’s got now.”

“But - why?” Jaeris was puzzled. “Why would you want to work for a madman and a tyrant?”

“He believes that the Nerd Emperor is coming,” his guide explained. “He’s been gathering strength in the next galactic arm, and he’s got numbers on his side. Lord Critic believes that building an empire of his own is the only way to gather enough resources to stand a chance of fighting him.”

“But he’s expending his own resources conquering worlds,” Jaeris objected. “We’ve held him at a near-stalemate for three years; the only real advantage he has is the orbital battle platform and its disintegrator ray, at least until he can bring in reinforcements. And if he has to keep using that, what use is our planet going to be to him? Our resources have been depleted in the fight, too.”

His guide chewed on his lip. “I finally got up the nerve to ask him that,” he said wistfully. “I should have known better. I was already falling out of favor; he had a new gofer, younger, more nubile than me. At that point, I was the communications officer between his office and General Phelous’s.”

“Is that General Voice’s real name?” Jaeris interrupted.

His guide laughed. “No, that would be General Snob,” he corrected him. “I don’t think you’ve met General Phelous yet; last I saw him, he was busy subjugating the last of the Tektopia hold-outs with the other activated battle platform. The third one was still being refit; it had taken a lot of damage, and it didn’t have a disintegrator cannon yet. Honestly, it probably still doesn’t. Those things take forever to build, and then they need huge energy plants.”

“You know how they work?” Jaeris yelped. “You’ve got to tell me! If we know their weak spots -”

“Lord Critic does, too,” his guide said. “They’re crazy-well defended. Anyway, I was serving as his liaison with General Phelous, and the general was starting to grumble about the waste of resources, that we were pressing too hard, too fast. And I made the mistake of asking Lord Critic about it, after I’d fallen out of favor. I guess I hadn’t realized how much he didn’t need me.” He stared off into the distance, his eyes full of memories. “That was when he killed me.”

Jaeris blinked. “You look alive enough to me,” he pointed out.

“Oh, you hadn’t realized yet?” His guide grimaced and pressed the fingers of his left hand against the skin of the inside of his right arm, stretching the skin against the structure underneath. The faint tracery of servos and circuits became just barely visible under the pale skin. “I’m a cyborg,” he explained. “After he shot me, Lord Critic had my ruined vitals replaced, and told me that if I was so concerned about resources, he’d sell me for some. I think he actually traded me for a few loads of radioactives from the mines on the inner planets here. I belong to one of the station masters now.”

“Wait,” Jaeris protested, “how can you belong to someone? Last I checked, slavery wasn’t legal here, or anywhere in this sector.”

“I told you, I’m not a person,” his guide insisted. “Legally, I’m dead, and my rights were all terminated when I was. I don’t even have a name anymore. My owner calls me Film Brain, because that’s all that’s left of me - a film of external tissues and a brain.” He wrinkled his nose. “And not a very good one, but it’s all I’ve got.”

“If your brain never died, you didn’t die,” Jaeris argued, “and even if you had, I don’t see how that makes you not a person.”

“Maybe on your planet, it’s different,” Film Brain said, shrugging, “but under Lord Critic’s jurisdiction, once your heart stops, you’re dead - and bodies are property, not people.”

Jaeris gaped at him. “Then he’s even worse at law than we thought,” he finally managed to spit out.

Film Brain shifted in place, fidgeting with both feet. “At any rate,” he continued, “if the campaign at Mellotron III isn’t over yet, why are you all the way out here?”

“We’re not doing that great,” Jaeris admitted. On the one hand, Film Brain had admitted that he had been a Critic sympathizer; on the other hand, if his story was even partially true, he had no reason to be loyal to Lord Critic now. “I was sent out to look for reinforcements. We received a prophesy that we need to reunite the three nearly-empty orders. We figured we were one, since we’re down to - well, never mind exact numbers, but we’re running pretty low.” He leaned against the pipe assembly emerging from the pump and tugged his hat down over his eyes. “We figured the Paladins of Zord were one of the other two. You know much about them?”

“I know where Zord system and the Fortress are,” Film Brain replied, his eyes brightening. “The Critic took steps to ensure they wouldn’t make a move against him while I was still in favor, although he could never convince them to form an alliance. They haven’t gained a new recruit in a decade, and the older members of the order never leave the Fortress. That’s about it, but I can give you directions there.”

“That’d be pretty great,” Jaeris said eagerly. “I don’t suppose you have any ideas about the third order? We didn’t have any leads we felt good about.”

“The Shadow Knights,” Film Brain said, grinning broadly.

“I don’t know if you noticed,” groaned Jaeris, “but I said ‘nearly empty,’ not ‘wiped from the face of the galaxy’. They’re gone; their school was wiped out by a freak meteor strike a dozen years ago, during one of their sacred ceremonies.”

“It wasn’t a freak meteor strike,” Film Brain insisted. “It was fired from the biggest Gauss cannon you could imagine - the Nerd Emperor’s secret weapon. The disintegrator beams were invented to serve as a defense against it, as well as to be an offensive weapon in their own right.”

Jaeris pushed his hat back so he could study Film Brain’s face. He didn’t look like he was lying; he looked like a child who knew something the grown-ups didn’t and was dying to share it. “But why?” he asked.

“The Nerd Emperor thought the Shadow Knights were a threat, a bigger one than the Gunslingers or the Paladins,” Film Brain explained. “That’s why he took them out. I saw the spy reports for Lord Critic, and they’re quite clear that it was a deliberate strike.” He tilted his head, as if he were about to tell a particularly clever joke. “And why the lone survivor has gone underground, quite literally.”

“There’s a surviving Shadow Knight?” Jaeris nearly lost his grip on the pipes. “Do you know where?”

“I know what planet he went to ground on,” Film Brain said cautiously. “I don’t know where on the planet he’s hiding.”

“We’ll figure it out,” Jaeris insisted. “You’ve got to tell me where he is! It could mean -” He broke off, realizing that what he’d been about to say might not have sounded quite so glorious to someone who had once been close to Lord Critic, betrayal or not.

“It could mean the survival of your world,” Film Brain finished. “Lord Critic makes examples of planets that don’t crack for him. I understand. I understand why he does it, too, but now that I’m not blinded by my - by his charisma, I have no reason to fight for his goals, other than my not being a fan of the Nerd Emperor, either.”

“If the united orders are strong enough to repel Lord Critic and his battle stations,” Jaeris suggested, “then they might be strong enough to stand against the Nerd Emperor as well. I don’t think the prophesy would have led us out from under one tyrant just to be crushed by another one.”

“Then you have more faith in prophesy than I do,” Film Brain said, “but then, I don’t know how to make a soul blaster, either, so I can’t claim to be a spiritual expert.”

“There’s not many of us left who do.” Jaeris let his hand fall to the grip of the pistol and opened his mind to it; an echo of Joanna’s laughter danced across his consciousness. Making the matching his-and-hers set had been unique even among the Gunslingers, and it connected them even across the vast reaches of space. If Lord Critic had made a move, if she were hurt or even dead, the blaster would know, and so would he.

Film Brain watched him closely, but said nothing. Reluctantly, Jaeris focused himself back on the here and now. “So, for directions to the last Shadow Knight - what’s your price, kid?”

Swallowing, Film Brain replied, “Smuggle me off the station.”

Jaeris hadn’t expected that. “I can’t take you home with me,” he protested. “The ship only holds three people.”

“My life-support needs are a lot smaller than a living human’s,” Film Brain pointed out. “But I don’t think I want to be where Lord Critic is right now, or for that matter, General Snob. There are plenty of inhabited planets between the Shadow Knight’s hideout and the Fortress; you can drop me off on the way.” He took a deep breath and looked around. “I’ve been working on imitating a human being again. I think if I can find a colony world where they don’t do deep-tissue scanning, I can pass for a real person, at least for a while; I still have retinas and DNA, so I can pass those scans. And I’ve long since decided I really don’t like being property.”

“Sentient beings aren’t property, no matter how much metal they have in them,” Jaeris said. “All right, I’ll get you out of here.”

Film Brain smiled. “We’ll have to take the freight exit,” he said. “Cyborgs aren’t allowed on the surface except at the loading docks.”

Jaeris frowned. “I’m not parked anywhere near the freight loading docks,” he replied. “Will they let me pull around to there?”

“Only if you’re loading or unloading something.” Film Brain pulled himself to his feet and headed for the service door they’d come through before. “I’ll admit, I don’t really have a good plan for that part.”

As they headed for a freight elevator, Jaeris pondered whether they could find a vacc suit for Film Brain and have him crawl around the outside of Palladium Station to the _Stratocaster_. The problem with that plan, he realized, was that stealing a vacc suit was probably just as risky as stealing a cyborg. He watched the floors drop past them.

“Where will we be relative to parking dock 247-A-9?” he asked.

Film Brain stepped back and blinked. A monochrome holoprojection of a section of the upper floor flickered into visibility in front of him. “We’ll be here,” he said, pointing to a freight dock, “and that parking dock is here.” His other hand pointed to a plain oval in the middle of a long hallway.

Jaeris nodded. “Okay,” he said brusquely, “I have a plan. Act casual, and then move when I tell you, got it?”

“Got it,” Film Brain replied as the elevator doors slid open onto the grimy-sterile hallway.

They’d manage to turn down the corridor away from the loading dock before the alarm started blaring. “Warning: cyborg out of designated area,” a loudspeaker announced. “Return to designated area or prepare to be deactivated.”

“Hoof it!” Jaeris shouted at Film Brain, charging forward with his shoulders down. “Look out, hot soup, coming through!” he roared at the milling crowds in front of them; half of them were scurrying out of the way, while the other half started rubbernecking, looking for the escaped cyborg. 

A police drone slid out of its nook in the wall. “Halt,” it said in a monotone. “You are under arrest for creating a disturbance of the peace.”

“Nah, really?” Jaeris replied, unholstering the soul blaster and firing twice. The first shot took out the drone; the second fused the lock on the next nook. He could hear the drone inside battering itself against the door trying to get out as he raced past.

“Look out!” Film Brain shouted behind him. “There’s a cyborg on the loose!”

The crowd began to swirl in panic. “Cyborg? Where?” shouted a female-sounding voice off to Jaeris’s left.

“Behind us!” Jaeris panted. “I had to shoot it to get away! Everyone take cover!”

“You are under arrest,” another drone began just ahead. Jaeris dropped it with a shot; the one behind it returned fire, at Film Brain rather than Jaeris. Film Brain managed to duck the shot, limbs flailing. That, more than the alarms or the servos he’d seen earlier, convinced Jaeris that Film Brain really was a cyborg; no untrained human could dodge a laser like that.

Fortunately, the drones hadn’t figured out where they were going; they just popped out of their slots in the walls as they approached. Jaeris considered drawing the projectile pistol, too, but double-firing ran double the risk of civilian casualties; he decided against it. They were almost there, anyway; he grabbed an abandoned food cart and shoved it in front of the next nook, trapping the drone at least temporarily.

“Oh, there’s the hot soup,” Film Brain commented dryly as they raced past an empty parking dock.

“Actually, I think it was fish tacos,” Jaeris replied, panting. He skidded to a stop at the next door and slapped his palm against the printplate. The airlock irised open.

“Can they tell there are two people in here?” he asked Film Brain.

“I told you,” Film Brain replied, “I’m not a person. I’m just cargo, as far as it knows.” He squeezed his eyes shut and held his breath as the scan lines raced over them.

After a moment, the interior door slid open. Jaeris opened his ship’s hatch and hoisted himself through, then reached down to give Film Brain a hand up.

Fortunately, the station’s traffic control was sufficiently automated that Jaeris needed no special permissions to leave. He was halfway through the takeoff checklist when the radio crackled to life.

“I believe you have a valuable piece of my property aboard,” stated a voice roughened by age and too many hours in a vacc suit.

“He ain’t property,” Jaeris grunted. “Besides, I need him more than you do.”

A message flashed across the comm screen. Jaeris raised an eyebrow, then tapped the radio handset. “Take it off my tab,” he said shortly. “I overpaid for parking.”

“So you did,” the voice replied after a pause. “You’ll understand if I choose not to issue a refund.”

“Sounds fair,” Jaeris agreed. “ _Stratocaster_ leaving Palladium Station.”

“Don’t come back,” the voice said, and more text streamed across the comm screen.

“Wasn’t planning on it,” Jaeris grumbled, although it might make finding Darkwolf harder if he needed her later. “Strap in,” he called back to the galley, where Film Brain seemed to be having trouble folding down the third acceleration chair. “I’m boosting in three, two, one, now!”

As they sailed up out of the gravity well of the star, Jaeris inspected the text on the screen. It was a receipt, 350 creds for a Type 3-Rho cyborg.

He deleted it. “Hey, Film Brain, where are we going again?” he shouted.

“Give me a moment.” He saw Film Brain fold back a flap of skin just under his ear and unspool a silvery filament, then attach it to the galley’s lone dataport.

A map appeared on the navigation screen; Jaeris swung his chair around to face it. Then he ran his hand down his face.

“Of course the last Shadow Knight is hiding somewhere on Twilight,” he grumbled as he programmed the hyperdrive.

\---

Twilight was the sort of planet that would be a tourist trap if it were slightly nicer; pretty auroras or a lovely set of rings would make it a vacation destination. Instead, it occupied that peculiar territory between “nice place to visit, but you wouldn’t want to live there” and “godforsaken barely-habitable hellhole”.

The planet was tidally locked to its star, such that one side received constant searing daylight and the opposite side was in eternal night. The day side was hot enough to broil flesh without a protective suit, and the night side was largely covered with an enormous ice cap. The temperature differential meant that gale-force winds were always blowing from one side to the other across the narrow band of planet that was the temperate zone between them. Despite the harsh winds, the planet had an ecology of sorts, with lichens and mosses on the rocks, algae in the shallow, salty seas, and native animal life to eat them both. Most of the local life-forms reminded visitors of shrimp or scorpions, although they were all more likely to bite or pinch than sting.

The scanners found no complex life-forms, but they did register a distinct energy reflection from a valley in the dusk zone. “You were being literal,” Jaeris realized out loud. “He really did make his bunker underground.”

“No reason not to,” Film Brain replied. “I mean, he can shadow-walk in and out; he doesn’t even need a door.” He was still interfaced with the ship; Jaeris saw no reason not to let a second pair of eyes look at the sensors, and this was faster than letting Film Brain take the co-pilot’s seat.

“That’s real?” Jaeris said, surprised. “I mean, that’s basically teleportation with a trivial limitation. I didn’t think a group that powerful would really exist.”

“That’s how most people feel about soul blasters and soulbonding,” Film Brain retorted. “And yes, it was real. There were even a couple of ships they could shadow-walk through short hops. That’s why the Nerd Emperor and Lord Critic both saw them as a threat.”

“Is that how this one got away?” Jaeris asked, plotting a landing path that put them slightly off to one side. Fortunately, the wind was steady and mostly above ground level; compensating for it was relatively simple.

“No,” Film Brain answered, carefully disentangling his dataprobe from the ship’s interface and retracting it into the flap in his skull. “The asteroid was an extinction-level event; it took out the entire ecosystem of Penumbra II, the planet the Shadow Knight fortress was on. This one survived because he was playing hooky from the initiation ceremonies.”

“Why would he do that?” Jaeris brought her down with a hand on the controls; the landscape here was dark volcanic sand around spires of crystalline metamorphic rock, and the landing struts sank several feet into the loose soil.

“I don’t know,” Film Brain admitted. “The only reason we know for sure he’s here is that one of the Syrens of Cucurbita II was with him at the time, and she had - connections, let’s say, with someone high in Lord Critic’s organization.” He smiled, like he’d just told a joke.

“And she’s trustworthy?” Jaeris asked. The life support system approved of the air outside - it was a little thinner than Jaeris was used to, but it was breathable.

Film Brain shrugged as he unbuckled himself from the fold-out acceleration bench. “You found your energy signature, didn’t you?”

“Fair enough,” Jaeris agreed. The hatch slid open, and both men eased out to the ground below.

To one side, the sky glowed with the rich oranges, pinks, and deep blues of a sky just past sunset. On the other horizon, stars were visible against a nearly-black sky. Above them, jagged columns of dark quartz reached upwards, growing closer together and forming a short cliff off to the left of the ship. Dunes swelled to either side, leaving a valley, or at least a long depression in the smoke-dark sand; above them, wisps of cloud skittered by in the high winds.

“I should have tried the radio before we got out of the ship,” Jaeris realized.

“If you have an exterior dataport, I can probably patch you in,” Film Brain offered.

Jaeris shook his head. “There’s only one, and it’s by the fuel recharge station,” he explained.

Suddenly, the sand in front of him heaved. A bipedal figure, dark as the sand with a pelt thick as a bear’s, rose in front of him and swiped a clawed paw at his face. Jaeris leaped back and grabbed for this projectile pistol, firing twice. The massive creature fell back a step, then charged again.

“What is that thing?” Jaeris yelped.

Film Brain scrambled for cover behind him. “I’m not sure,” he mumbled. “Give me a moment.”

A second shape erupted from the earth on Jaeris’s other side, a twining mass of ropy tentacles made of something more like tar than flesh. He whipped out the soul blaster and fired; the beam missed by a fraction of an inch, and the tentacles buried themselves in the sand again.

“These are way bigger than the planet’s ecology should be able to support,” Jaeris wheezed as he turned to face the first creature again.

“They’re not real,” Film Brain shouted. “They don’t show up in the infrared or the ultraviolet, and they’re not pushing air when they move! I can see them, but they’re not showing up on my other sensors.”

“Illusions?” That made sense to Jaeris; he closed his eyes. Sure enough, there was no sound, no vibrations from them moving across the sand, no life force to project an aura. When he opened his eyes, the monster was frozen in place and dissolving like static.

“An image projector,” he realized aloud. “Manipulating light through some means to form 3-D images. We couldn’t tell they didn’t make any noise because the wind’s too loud.”

Something flashed across Jaeris’s peripheral vision. He whirled to face it; his eyes lit upon two words written in the sand - “GO AWAY” - before the breeze erased them again.

“Shadow Knight!” he shouted into the wind. “My name is Jaeris, of the Noble Order of Gunslingers, and I’m also nearly the last of my kind. I’ve come to ask for help!”

The noise behind him was barely audible above the wind. He turned; someone had written “NO” on the hull of the ship in what looked like black clay.

“You’re our last hope!” Jaeris continued, hoping that the knight was still nearby. “We’re being bombarded by Lord Critic, and we’re trying to enact a prophesy, that reuniting the orders can save us all!”

The shadow of one of the crystal pillars shifted and became solid. A hooded and cloaked figure, taller than Jaeris and draped all in charcoal grey, took two steps towards them; the silhouette of a weapon was slung across his back. “I said no,” the figure announced. “Now leave.”

“Can’t you at least hear me out?” Jaeris pleaded.

The hooded man groaned. “Fine,” he huffed, “but the answer’s not going to change. How did you even find me here?”

“Lady Critic,” Film Brain said, smirking.

“Dammit, she said she wouldn’t tell anyone!” the knight pouted.

Jaeris’s eyes bulged. “One of the Syrens is Lord Critic’s wife?” he blurted.

“Sister!” Film Brain and the knight shouted in unison. Film Brain continued hastily, “Lady Critic decided she had no use for the aristocratic life, and became a Syren before Lord Critic began his current campaign. There’s little love lost between them, but there are matters of Lord Critic’s estate on his home world that require both of their attentions, so they do speak fairly often.” He shrugged at the knight. “She seemed rather upset by whatever it was you did.”

“Yeah, I said some things about her dog that I probably shouldn’t have said,” the knight mumbled.

“You insulted her dog?” Film Brain gasped. “I’m surprised she let you live.”

“No, no,” the knight protested, “I said I wanted to kidnap her. Dognap. You know what I mean.”

“Anyway,” Jaeris said, glaring at Film Brain, “one of the postulates of my order delivered a prophesy that, if we unite the three nearly empty orders, we can defeat Lord Critic and take our planet back. We’d be happy to have you join us there. You could live in the sun again.”

“I don’t much care about sunlight, or about Lord Critic for that matter,” the knight replied. “I mean, I don’t like the guy; I hate what he’s done to the galactic political structure. He’s a warlord plain and simple, and so is the Nerd Emperor, who I have a much better reason to hate.” He paused, glancing towards the horizon; one of Twilight’s small moons was rising. “But - I didn’t want to be a Shadow Knight in the first place. Why would I want to go back to that? I’ve got no fraternal brothers, I’d be painting a huge target on my back for the Nerd Emperor, and I’m not even very good at it.”

“You were doing pretty well with the illusions,” Jaeris pointed out. “You had me going, anyway.”

“That’s not a discipline of the order, though,” the knight said, swinging the object on his back around to the front. It wasn’t a weapon, after all; it was a keytar.

“That’s one of the Great Instruments of Dark Pa’au,” Jaeris realized. “How do you have one of those?”

“Rescued it when Dark Pa’au’s ship crashed,” the knight said, shrugging. “Music was always my first love. But, you know, you shadow-walk once by accident and your parents ship you off to a strange planet to be brought up by warrior-monks.”

Jaeris grimaced. “You have to volunteer to be a Gunslinger,” he stated, “even if you demonstrate that you can soulbond or you have perfect aim. We don’t take kids who don’t want to join.”

“Yours was always the least rigid order,” the knight agreed. “Anyway, I’m flattered that you came all this way looking for me, but I have no intention of leaving the relative safety of this place, for you or for anyone.”

Jaeris’s face fell for a moment, then was revived by a thoughtful look. “Wait here just a moment,” he said, and darted back towards the ship.

The knight turned back towards Film Brain. “So, Lord Critic knows I’m here? Why hasn’t he come looking for me?”

“Too busy with other things,” Film Brain said. “At least, last I knew. I’ve sort of fallen from grace.”

“Yeah, I saw the cyberware,” the knight said. “Tough luck. Lord Critic goes through flunkies like tissues.”

“I wish I’d known that before,” Film Brain lamented. “I don’t know if I’d’ve changed anything, but still -” 

He was interrupted by Jaeris returning with an acoustic guitar slung over one shoulder. Jaeris perched on one of the shorter crystal columns and strummed, tuning up. “While I’m here,” he asked, “wanna jam for a bit?”

The knight appeared to be staring at him; the veil across his face made it hard to tell. “Oh, what the hell, sure,” he finally said. “I haven’t played with anyone else in years.”

They were a little rough to start with, and keeping the guitar in tune in the howling wind was a chore, but soon enough they were ripping through tune after tune, laughing, showing off, belting out harmonies. Film Brain didn’t join in, but he was an appreciative audience, applauding like mad and requesting old favorites.

It was hours later when Jaeris set the guitar down, his fingers bleeding. “I’m out of practice,” he laughed.

The knight cocked his head. “You were a musician, before?”

“Before what?”

“Before Lord Critic started disintegrating parts of your homeworld,” the knight explained. “You sound really familiar.”

“I played a bit,” Jaeris admitted, “but mostly I was a music critic.”

The knight snapped his fingers. “That’s right!” he shouted. “I saw your review of Jay and the Miikes’ ‘Hyperspace Boogie.’ You tore them a new one.”

“I’m surprised anyone remembers that,” Jaeris chuckled. “Not one of my more nuanced reviews.”

The knight fell silent, his fingers dancing across the keys of his instrument without pressing them. “Maybe we could form a band,” he said wistfully.

Jaeris bit back his first response. “I’ve got other things I need to do first,” he said simply.

Slowly, the knight pushed himself to his feet. “Todd,” he said. “I’m Todd of the Shadow Knights. And I’ll join you, if you’ll promise you’ll join a band with me when Lord Critic stops menacing Mellotron, one way or the other.”

Jaeris’s eyebrows went up. “Sounds good,” he said. “My ship’s small, but it’s got enough room for three, and we’re looking for a place to drop Film Brain here off.”

Todd shook his head. “I’ve still got my shadescout,” he said. “The hyperdrive isn’t as fancy as yours, but it’ll do. Where are you bound next?”

Jaeris was speechless; it was Film Brain who answered, “The Fortress of Zord.”

\---

The _Stratocaster_ held position above the dusk band of Twilight while they waited for Todd to join them. Jaeris watched the control panel with a mixture of curiosity and astonishment as Film Brain interfaced with the hyperspace navigation system. They’d be dropping to subluminal well outside the Zord system, and once he saw why, Jaeris was very grateful Film Brain had decided to stay on.

“I thought the Fortress was just their temple complex on the planet,” Jaeris murmured. “Not the whole star system.”

“It’s both,” Film Brain said. His eyes were unfocused, staring into interstellar space with the ship’s sensors, but he could clearly hear just fine. “There’s an outer perimeter with a sensor net and security drones, the Paladins’ battle station and its fleet of fighters, and then the physical fortress itself planetside.” He paused; his eyes darted back and forth as if he were reading something printed on the interior hull of the ship. “This ship is fast enough we could theoretically run the perimeter, but we’d probably take damage. We’d never get past the fighters, though.”

“I ain’t planning on sneaking or bullying my way in, anyway,” Jaeris protested. “I’m trying to make an alliance here, so we want to make a decent impression.”

A speck of darkness separated from the deep shadows of Twilight and made a wide arc, curving towards them. Jaeris peered out of the front windows, then at the viewscreen. “Is that what a Shadow Knight scout ship looks like?” he asked.

“Scanning,” Film Brain announced mechanically, then continued in his normal voice, “Yes, that’s a shadescout. Possibly the last of them.”

Jaeris shook his head. “I’ve seen another one. Recently.”

Film Brain blinked, and his gaze returned to the interior of the ship, then to Jaeris. “Oh! Does General Snob still have his refit?”

“Yeah,” Jaeris said uneasily. “He tried to stop me leaving from Mellotron system. But I thought his ship didn’t have a hyperdrive! How do you fit one on a ship that small? Do you think he could have followed me?”

“If he had,” Film Brain replied, “he’d almost certainly have shown up by now. But no, I’m pretty sure I remember him modifying his ship pretty severely - he took out the hyperdrive and used the power source to run his torpedo arsenal. He figured if he needed to jump, he could just dock with Gremlin Station and take the whole kit with him.”

“Wait,” Jaeris protested, “we only ever saw one battle station, and I thought it was Lord Critic’s personal one.” 

The nearly-invisible needle of shadow and starlight pulled up beside them, and Jaeris eased on power to the ion engines. Todd hailed them: “Hey, can someone bounce over a jump-map to Zord? I know about where it is, but my nav system is five years out of date and I don’t want to end up inside a star somewhere.”

“I’ll beam that right over,” Film Brain assured him, then turned back to Jaeris as Twilight began to fall behind them in the viewscreens. “Only two of the battle platforms are equipped with the planet-scale disintegrator beams, or were when I was there. One of them is Lord Critic’s personal one, Station Awesome; the other is General Phelous’s, which doesn’t officially have a name, or at least didn’t last I knew. Usually we just called it Phelous Station. Gremlin Station is General Snob’s, and its power plant wasn’t big enough to mount a disintegrator cannon and still run the hyperdrive, so it was the primary fighter carrier instead. It took a direct hit in the Tektopia campaign and was up for a refit, so that might not still be the case, though.”

“And a carrier doesn’t need to be in planetary orbit to be effective,” Jaeris realized. “So okay, they parked that out by the ring planets to hold in reserve if we ever got a squadron together. But then why didn’t they scramble fighters to come after me?”

Film Brain shrugged. “Either General Snob figured he could handle you on his own, or they figured they were better off with you out of the system than in it, I’d guess. Hard to tell, at this point.”

Jaeris reached for the handle of the soul blaster and let his mind drift for a second. He could still feel Joanna on the other end of the soulbond, alive and well; in fact, her energy was high and bright. Hopefully, that meant she was excited rather than angry; it didn’t feel like fear.

He came back to find Film Brain staring at him. “What?” he asked, defensively.

Film Brain shook his head. Asteroids drifted past the viewscreens, distant and harmless. “Just wondering what that’s like,” Film Brain explained quietly.

“The soulbond?” Jaeris thought for a minute. “I don’t know how to describe it,” he finally admitted. “Joanna and I have been bonded since we were teenagers, and we fused the bond to our blasters when we got married sixteen years ago. I don’t really have clear memories what it’s like _not_ to have a piece of my soul in someone else’s possession.”

Film Brain shifted in the co-pilot’s seat. “I don’t even know if I have a soul anymore,” he confessed. “I mean, I’d like to think I do, but -”

“Now, that I can tell for you,” Jaeris said with a smirk, unbuckling himself from his acceleration chair. “Hold still; I’ll have to touch you.”

“No problem,” Film Brain said, sounding a little bewildered. He froze in place as Jaeris stepped behind him and positioned his hands against Film Brain’s temples.

Jaeris closed his eyes again and felt outward. Something strange buzzed and fluttered under his fingers, but beneath that was a familiar glow. A brief flash of images filled his mind, and it took an act of will not to snatch his hands back; he didn’t stop himself from gasping aloud in time.

Film Brain looked up. “Nothing there?”

“Oh, no, you’ve still got your soul, all right,” Jaeris said, rubbing his hands together as he took his seat again. “Although caging it in metal isn’t doing it any good. You sure you’re not a soulbonder?”

“Quite sure,” Film Brain snorted. “Why?”

Jaeris looked away; even with the invitation to ask, it seemed like an invasion of privacy. “What you felt for Lord Critic,” he murmured, and he could feel his cheeks flush. “I didn’t think folks who couldn’t bond could feel like that.”

“That was just a desperate crush, born of immaturity and insecurity,” Film Brain said; his own cheeks didn’t color - maybe there wasn’t enough blood left to do so - but he stared at the floor. “If it were a soulbond, it wouldn’t have gone away, I don’t think. Besides, can a bond be that one-sided?”

“No, I guess not,” Jaeris answered. The thought of admiring, even idolizing, the tyrant who threatened his world, his order, everything he knew, was making his head spin; they weren’t his feelings - they tasted wrong - but they still confused him.

_Love. Pain. Need. Betrayal._

“I’m sorry,” Film Brain whispered. “I shouldn’t have asked you to do that.”

“Not your fault,” Jaeris replied. “I wasn’t thinking.”

The radio crackled again. “Shadescout _Kali_ here,” Todd announced. “Coordinates received and processed. Ready to jump to hyperspace whenever you are.”

“Let’s boost it,” Jaeris answered into the handset, and reached for the controls, glad to have a distraction.

\---

The drop out of hyperspace was smooth, but the view momentarily confused Jaeris.

Apparently he wasn’t the only one. “What the hell is that?” Todd blurted from the radio.

A glistening network of laser beams made a gigantic buckyball around the inner system. This star had only one gas giant, swinging in a long, lonely orbit, and no asteroid belt; surely there wasn’t enough dust in a system with no asteroids to leave the beams visible?

“What’s scattering the light like that?” Jaeris switched the radio to open broadcast and pulled up the sensor scanners.

“They’re not standard lasers,” Film Brain replied. “They’re some kind of combination of lasers and repulsors.”

“Like ships’ shields?” Todd asked. “Does that mean they’ve actually shielded their planet?”

“Not exactly,” Film Brain explained. “There’s almost no field in the gaps between beams, and those are big enough to drive a small planet through. I think the repulsors are to keep the beams from being interrupted by objects.”

“That’s got to take an enormous amount of power,” Jaeris marveled.

“And it’s mostly for show,” Todd complained. “I mean, if objects can’t interrupt the beams, then the beams can’t interrupt objects, either, if you know what I mean.”

“I suspect in offensive mode the repulsors turn off,” Film Brain noted. “But yes, it’s partly to display how powerful the Paladins are.” His fingers twitched, and a red triangle appeared on Jaeris’s viewscreen. “That’s the entrance gate, as it were; the grid will take an entry anywhere else as a hostile act, according to what it’s broadcasting.”

“Then that’s where we’re headed.” Jaeris swung the ship around. The entry point was about 120 degrees around Zord’s orbit from its own position, distant enough to mount defenses if something hostile came through, but not hidden by solar glare.

The _Stratocaster_ and the _Kali_ pulled up to an enormous sensor ring. “Looks like they scan the bejeebers out of any incoming ships,” Jaeris noted.

“I don’t remember these guys being this paranoid,” Todd said.

“If one of the other major warrior orders was wiped from the galaxy, you might take some serious precautions, too,” Film Brain pointed out.

“We didn’t,” Jaeris said, shrugging, “but maybe we should have.” He opened a hailing channel. “Greetings,” he said, trying to sound formal. “I’m Jaeris of the Noble Order of Gunslingers, of Mellotron III.”

“And I’m Todd of the Shadow Knights, last of my order, of Twilight,” Todd added.

“We need to speak to the heads of the order of the Paladins of Zord,” Jaeris continued. “An issue that concerns all of the remaining warrior orders is going on, and it requires all of our attentions.”

The voice that replied was flat, mechanical, clearly artificial. “Greetings, Jaeris of Mellotron and Todd of Twilight,” it said. “The Paladins of Zord will grant no audiences without an appointment.”

“It’s not a huge hurry,” Jaeris answered. “When is the next available appointment?”

A strange clicking and whirring came from the speaker. “The Grand Secretary of the Paladins is currently unavailable,” it finally announced. “An appointment must be made with the Grand Secretary.”

“When will they be available?” Jaeris asked.

Again, clicks and whirrs, as if a robot with a misaligned motor were moving in the background. “Insufficient data to reply,” the speaker said.

“Can you give us an estimate?” Todd broke in.

This pause was even longer. “The Grand Secretary is likely to be available for appointments in 22.4 years,” the voice said, interrupted by a crackle of static.

“Two decades?” Jaeris protested. “That’s ridiculous! How many appointments are on the Paladins’ calendar right now?”

More whirring. “No scheduled appointments,” the voice replied. “Please return later when the Grand Secretary is available.”

“This thing’s got to be malfunctioning,” Jaeris said. “Can we beam a message past it to the planetary station?”

“Maybe,” Film Brain answered, his brow furrowing. “Can I open a secure channel? Maybe I can hack in and figure out what’s going on with the automated system. Something doesn’t sound right.”

“Help yourself,” Jaeris said as Film Brain’s eyes unfocused again. “Any thoughts, Todd?”

“Only that it’s weird that they have this big a security system, and no living beings at the gate to monitor it,” Todd replied. “I mean, obviously most of it would have to be automated, but I’d have wanted at least one real person to keep an eye on things.”

“And to notice when the system got hacked,” Film Brain’s voice announced from the radio. “That was trivially easy; their security protocols are completely automated and not very flexible at all. Jaeris, something weird is definitely going on. We’re the first sentient contact the system has had in two and a half years.”

“Then who’s been making two decades’ worth of appointments?” Todd asked.

“No one,” Film Brain replied. “There aren’t any appointments in the system. That 22.4 years is when the current appointment calendar ends. The last recorded visitor at the gate was General Phelous, and he wasn’t admitted, either. The last time a Paladin was in contact with the gate was almost six months prior to that, when they appear to have fired all the non-initiates on their security forces and sent them out of the Zord system entirely.”

“That would have been a couple of months after the asteroid strike on us,” Todd said.

“Exactly,” Film Brain agreed. “The order had been shrinking for centuries, just because they were so picky about who they admitted and initiated, but three years ago they just stopped interacting with the galaxy outside their system at all. No one’s been in or out since.” The clicking and whirring sped up to a whine and then stopped abruptly. “I’ve generated a permission slip for us, so to speak,” he announced. “It’ll scan us as we pass, but it should let us through unless it’s programmed not to allow cyborgs.”

“Let’s hope they’re not that closed-minded,” Jaeris said as a pale yellow field filled the ring of the gate. He tapped the throttle controls and eased the ship forward, with the shadescout at his flank.

\---

“No one home here, either,” Jaeris marveled.

The Floating Fortress of the Paladins of Zord filled the front windows, massive and motionless. The radio was periodically announcing that they were to stop and allow themselves to be scanned, or the drones would fire. No scanners other than the ones at the gate had yet appeared, and the drones were still tracing clearly pre-programmed courses. No fighters had emerged from the battle station, and no A.I. as sophisticated as the one that had interrogated them at the gate had popped up to ask any further questions. Preliminary scans had shown no life forms on the station at all.

“Okay, no Paladins at the gate is weird,” Todd insisted, “but no Paladins on the station? That’s got to be enemy action.”

“I don’t know what it is, but it’s not right,” Film Brain responded from the radio; his body looked all but unconscious now, as his mind raced through the battle station’s computer systems. The countermeasures here were significantly better than the gate’s, but not good enough to keep him out. “The last station commander went planetside shortly after they fired their security,” he continued. “It’s been completely automated since then, and that hasn’t been good for it at all. Two of the five main power generators are offline due to uncorrected fuel imbalances. If they needed the station to mount a fight, they’d be crippled.”

“What about the fighter fleet?” Todd asked.

“Intact, but completely offline; not even a squadron in standby mode, and no one on the station to fly them even if they were,” Film Brain answered. “They’d have to bring a troop transport up from the surface to scramble a flight.”

“That’s insane!” Jaeris insisted. “They have to know that leaves them defenseless.”

“Unless they really, really trust the drones,” Todd added.

“Which they shouldn’t,” Film Brain finished. “They’re good enough to stop a single ship, or a small squad, but if Lord Critic brought Station Awesome here, he could blast his way through without any major losses. And they have to have known that, and while they might trust him not to after the promises he made, they shouldn’t.” He paused, and two drones reversed course on the viewscreen. “I’m coming back,” he announced. “I can’t make the system believe we have an appointment, but I think I’ve programmed it to ignore the fact that we don’t, at least for long enough for us to land.”

The shadescout drifted forwards. “Where at?” Todd asked.

A blue square blinked on the viewscreen as Film Brain stirred in his chair. “That’s their main landing field,” he said from behind Jaeris instead of through the speaker. “It’s the spot least likely to make the automated system think there’s something wrong.”

“Sounds good,” Jaeris said, plotting as straightforward a course down as possible.

\---

By the time the landing field stretched away beneath them, a vast sheet of grey concrete against the green landscape, they were flanked by a ring of drones escorting them down, but none of them had fired, or hailed them, for that matter.

For the first time, the shadescout wasn’t against the backdrop of a dark planet or the endless starry expanse of space. In some ways, it was even more impressive in sunlight; the velvet black was so deep it seemed to blur at the edges, making it hard to focus on visually. It was no wonder General Snob had wanted to scavenge one, once their owners were gone, Jaeris thought, although he remembered the general’s as much shinier. Perhaps he’d repainted it when he took out the hyperdrive.

The two ships landed without incident, still flanked by the drones on all sides. Jaeris and Film Brain checked the life support readout; gravity a little high for them, but the atmosphere was fine, as were the pressure and temperature. In fact, it was a beautiful day on Zord, at least at the Fortress itself. They popped the hatch and climbed down the ladder to the concrete.

Todd, on the other hand, looked a little warm in his robe, cloak, and veil. Jaeris wondered if it was a requirement of the order that he not remove them, and if so, if Todd as the last member could change the rules, or whether he felt bound by his fellow Knights even in death.

“This is crap,” Todd said, sounding slightly out of breath. “Look - there have to be dozens of troop transports and air-to-space fighters here, just sitting in those hangars. And there are dozens of hangers. This fleet’s got to be as big as the one on the station, and they haven’t moved in years.” He pointed at a building in mild disrepair. “That hangar’s clearly rusted shut,” he said. “There’s grass growing through the cracks in the concrete, and the blocks are getting forced apart. Anything that needs a flat surface to build up take-off speed instead of taking off vertically doesn’t have a flat enough runway any more.”

“Which way is the fortress?” Jaeris asked. Film Brain pointed towards what, by the position of the sun, must be planetary north, and they set off across the vast expanse of pavement. Todd was right; it was cracked in places, off-kilter from groundswell in others, still fine for VTOL ships, but nearly useless for horizontal ones - including most of the Paladins’ fighters.

The Fortress itself, true to its name, rose from the end of the landing field like a massive cinderblock. A few windows peeked out from the highest levels, and a pair of flags hung on either side of the main door. One showed the emblem of the old Empire, a pair of swords crossed in front of a crown; the other was the Paladins’ own emblem, a silver field with a circle in the center showing a wall of old-fashioned fired bricks. Both flags were faded and tattered from sunlight, rain, and wind.

Todd looked at the doors, a pair of metal barriers more than twice his height. “How do we knock?” he asked.

Jaeris shrugged, stepped forward, and rapped on the door with his knuckles.

Nothing happened. Glancing around, Jaeris saw what might have been a printpad next to the doors; long wear had made it nearly the same color as the concrete. He pressed his hand into it.

“You do not have an appointment,” announced a flat, mechanical voice from an unlocatable speaker. “Please make an appointment with the Grand Secretary to gain entrance.”

“Okay, now what?” Jaeris asked.

“Hey, this is your prophesy quest,” Todd answered. “I’m just here because I miss jamming that much.”

“Can the Keytar of Dark Pa’au throw illusions that will fool an automated system?” Jaeris asked.

Film Brain answered instead of Todd. “No, it’s a mental effect, not a physical one. They won’t show up on camera.”

“It doesn’t work nearly as well in daylight, anyway,” Todd added. “Is this the only entrance to the Fortress?”

“As far as the schematics I could access show, there are other exits, but yes, only one entrance,” Film Brain agreed. “Nothing else will open from the outside without alerting the entire drone system.”

“How about the roof?” Jaeris asked. 

“Blistering with defense systems,” Film Brain replied. “In fact, the security command center is atop the back wall of the fortress, and it’s probably the safest place to be.”

Jaeris paced back and forth. “Are we even sure they’re here? Maybe it’s a false front.”

“No,” Todd said, “I scanned for life-forms before we landed, and they’re all here. No other sophonts on the planet.” He shifted around to look back the way they’d came. “Jaeris, do you remember how many Paladins there are supposed to be?”

“There used to be thousands,” Jaeris answered. “But I think they were down to a few hundred, last I checked.”

Todd looked up at the walls. “The Fortress is supposed to be built for seven thousand,” he said. “I only found about thirty life forms.”

“That few?” Film Brain sounded surprised.

Todd nodded. “And all in one part of the Fortress,” he continued. “Like they were having a council meeting or something, and only the Council itself was there.”

“Council meetings don’t last three years,” Film Brain argued. “And no one’s arrived or left since then.”

Jaeris shook his head. “This gets creepier and creepier,” he muttered. “We’ve got to get in there and find out what’s going on. Maybe they’re in trouble, or under some kind of quarantine.”

Film Brain glanced at Todd. “I don’t suppose you can shadow-walk in and just open the door for us from the inside?”

“Even if it didn’t require a palmprint, retina scan, or DNA test from a Paladin, which would be really stupid after all the security we’ve been through so far,” Todd pointed out, “I can’t shadow-walk to someplace I haven’t seen, at least on video.”

“I’ve seen schematics,” Film Brain pointed out. “They were in the gate A.I.’s memory.” He rubbed his face next to his eyes; a monochrome holoprojection of the doorway and the entrance hall behind it appeared in green light in front of him.

Todd leaned down until the veil brushed through the projection lines. “Maybe?” he said, but he sounded skeptical. “It really doesn’t replace seeing it myself.”

“We could go back to the ship, and I could show it onscreen,” Film Brain offered.

“3D would be a lot better,” Todd answered. “My ship doesn’t have a full-color holoprojector; does yours?”

“Not a good one,” Jaeris said, “but I might be able to do something even better, if you guys don’t mind me messing around with your minds a little.”

“I’m not into soulbondage,” Todd protested, bringing his hands up.

“No, it’s okay, he’s done it to me once already,” Film Brain explained. “It’s not nearly a full soulbond. More like a soul-light-touch, and he can bring memories with him.”

“I’ll be real gentle,” Jaeris promised. “Just enough to get the memory out of Film Brain’s brain and into yours.”

Todd looked like he was studying Jaeris’s face through the veil. “The whole point of this thing,” he said, indicating his outfit with a gesture, “is to keep our identities private, offline, unknown. Letting you into my mind seems like it would be defeating the point.”

Jaeris laughed. “Dude, I’ve already jammed with you. We were improvising off of each other. You think I don’t already know the outline of your spirit underneath that mask?”

Todd was silent for a second. “Fair enough,” he conceded, untucking the lower half of the veil and tying the loose ends behind his head to expose his jaw.

Film Brain stepped next to Todd and lowered his head, closing his eyes. “Go ahead,” he said. “I’ll try and keep a better handle on things this time.”

“Wasn’t your fault,” Jaeris assured him. Carefully, he laid one hand on Film Brain’s forehead, and the other on Todd’s cranium just below the ear. He closed his own eyes and breathed deep.

The memory was right on top of Film Brain’s thoughts, as if he were trying to hand it to him, which he probably was. Todd’s mind was much harder to get a grip on, as if it were veiled, too. A haze of regrets and promises not kept made it difficult for Jaeris to find anything solid. _Open up, man,_ he thought into the fog.

 _I’m trying,_ came the reply. _Remember, I was taught for years to do the exact opposite of this._

Jaeris steeled himself. He could push harder, he knew, but he would have to be very precise - he didn’t want Todd to perceive this as a violation. If only he could feel where he was!

Something blew past him. A G major chord.

 _Do that again_ , he sent. As the chord welled up, he caught it, answered it with an A minor, threw it back, followed it.

And he was in, surrounded by the essence of Todd. It was dark. That was not a surprise.

Cautiously, Jaeris reached back into Film Brain’s mind and poured the memory through himself. The schematics were remarkably detailed, he noted as they flowed past him; blueprints, photos during construction, maps of the automation systems, current photos of the entrance hall, even animations and live video. Film Brain had been thorough.

 _Got it,_ Todd sent back. _I think I can do this._

Jaeris withdrew and opened his eyes. Film Brain looked as if he were asleep on his feet; Jaeris tapped him on the shoulder, and he shook himself before looking up.

Todd was turning in a circle, shading his face with one hand. “I need a shadow to walk from,” he said. “These guys probably faced the door south just to mess with us.”

“They certainly seem paranoid about security,” Jaeris agreed. “Maybe with good reason, though.”

Film Brain pointed off to the left. “We’re not quite at local planetary noon yet,” he said. “The building should be casting a decent shadow on that side; is that going to be out of range?”

“The closer I am, the better,” Todd grumbled. “I’m still aiming for a target I’ve never hit before.”

Jaeris reached up and tugged experimentally on the old imperial banner. It came loose from the wall with a soft tearing noise and drifted into a pile at his feet. “Is this thick enough?” he asked. “It’s a pretty heavy fabric. It’d have to be, to have survived this long.”

Todd shrugged. “Let’s try it. Here, hold this end up.”

After some tussling, all three of them were crouched under the banner. The canvas was uncomfortably warm, but it was doing an admirable job of shading them, at least on the long ends.

Jaeris propped up his end like a tent pole. “Think it’ll work?”

“Feels okay,” Todd grunted. “You’ll have to stand closer, though.”

Jaeris took two steps forward. “Good enough?”

“Sure. Film Brain, you too.” Todd shifted the keytar around so the strap wasn’t holding his cloak down, then reached out and wrapped them both in the edges of the cloak, clutching them to his chest.

“What -” Jaeris started, and then the light shifted as everything dissolved. For a moment, it felt as if he were falling. When the world reformed, the air was still and stale, and the light much dimmer.

“You showed me your powers,” Todd said, his grin a startling white next to the veil as he released his grip on them. “I thought I’d share mine, too.”

“You could have warned us,” Film Brain groaned, leaning against the wall. They were in a doorway just off of the main entrance hall, and there was a thick layer of dust on the handle. The floor was clean, but every other horizontal surface looked like it hadn’t been touched in years.

“Either the maintenance bots are short,” Film Brain noted, “Or they’re not programmed very well.”

Jaeris tried the doorknob. It opened without any trouble, onto what looked like a formal dining hall for a thousand. Long tables in precise rows stretched away into the distance, covered in the same dust.

Door after door lead to similar scenes - conference rooms, offices, bedrooms that looked like small but luxurious hotel rooms, a library of physical books that made Film Brain squeal in delight, an air traffic control center, a war room, gymnasiums, dojos, a room filled with blank screens that was probably a media center, even bathrooms, all empty and all clearly unused for years. The door labeled “Armory” was locked, and Todd declined to try a second shadow-walk to get inside, on the grounds that if any room was booby-trapped it would be that one.

“Where did you say the life-forms you scanned for were?” Jaeris asked, after they’d scoured the first two floors.

“Looked like one of the upper floors near the north end,” Todd answered. “But I figured once we got in they’d notice us.”

Film Brain frowned. “I’m hearing something in the ultrasonics,” he stated. “Be alert - they might have sonic stunners. Probably automated, since I’m still not hearing any footprints.”

“Yeah, the Paladins were never renowned for their stealth,” Todd chuckled.

Jaeris shook his head. “Upstairs, then. Keep focused, guys.”

Floors three and four appeared to be barracks for trainees, rooms more like well-appointed dorms than hotels, but still comfortable-looking. There were dining halls on each floor, heavy with dust. All the beds were made, every dish put away in its place.

“It’s like the place was abandoned,” Todd noted, “and they made everyone clean up before they left.”

On the sixth floor they finally found a locked door. Film Brain took a look at it, then unscrewed a panel beside the door and unspooled the probe from his skull. “It looks hackable,” he said, “but keep an eye out; I might trip a security alarm.” 

After a few minutes with the thousand-yard stare, he refocused, saying, “I can open the door, but I’m going to have to keep talking to the system to keep it from realizing we’re not supposed to be here. You two go on in without me.” The door slid upwards into the wall, leaving a grand open archway.

Jaeris and Todd stepped in shoulder-to-shoulder. After the first few steps, Todd inhaled sharply. “My gods,” he hissed.

“Yeah, me too,” Jaeris muttered.

It was a mausoleum, more or less. Thirty marble sarcophagi lined the walls of the room, each attached to a gently blinking life-support system indicating the same thing: _Hibersleep Mode, Cryo: On_.

“Why would they have put themselves in hibersleep?” Todd asked, bewildered. “I mean, that’s what you do when you’re sending a colony ship the long way instead of using hyperdrive. Why would you do that and then go nowhere?”

Jaeris approached one of the life-support systems. “I don’t see a timer, either,” he noted. “They’re depending on the automated systems to wake them up, I guess.”

“I don’t think so,” Film Brain called from the doorway. “The system knows they’re in here, but that’s all it knows. There’s nothing about the hibersleep systems or cryostasis.”

Jaeris returned to the center isle and kept walking. The cryocoffin at the end looked different from the rest, smaller.

Todd checked one on the other side. “No timer, no identifying information, not even a nametag. This is bizarre.”

Jaeris reached the last sarcophagus. This one was topped in glass instead of marble, and its life-support system read _Hibersleep Mode, Cryo: Off, Standby_. Inside was a figure dressed in white with a dark brown cape attached to epaulets on his shoulders, a single pistol by his side, glasses, and an incongruous tweed trilby.

Todd arrived at Jaeris’s shoulder. “What’s with the guy in the hat?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” Jaeris answered, “but this one’s not actually a cryocoffin.”

“It couldn’t be, with the glass; it’d freeze over,” Todd observed.

“Guys?” Film Brain called from the other end of the room.

“Hold on just a sec,” Jaeris called back. “Look how they laid him in here,” he continued to Todd. “It looks like a corpse at a funeral, but they’ve left his weapon.” He closed his eyes and felt outward, into the casket. “He’s alive,” he reported, “and that’s another soul blaster, a really powerful one.”

“Guys?” Film Brain called again.

“Hold on just a minute,” Todd shouted back. “Why would you put a soul blaster in a hibersleep chamber?” he argued. “That belongs down in the arsenal!”

“GUYS!” Film Brain shrieked. “The ultrasonics from earlier weren’t stunners; they’re a silent alarm! There’s a meteorite headed straight for us, and I can’t wake up the frontier net!”

“ _What?_ ” Jaeris and Todd both shouted, scrambling back down the isle.

“There’s a near-lightspeed meteor headed right for us,” Film Brain repeated, “and the frontier systems have noticed it, but since it’s clearly not a ship, they haven’t activated the drones or the lasers to destroy it!”

“So activate them!” Todd yelled.

“I’m trying!” Film Brain wailed, “But I don’t have the right permissions! I can activate the sensors, and I can inhibit things, but I can’t give the system new instructions.”

Jaeris grabbed his hat in frustration. “Why wouldn’t they program the laser system thingy to take out meteorites?”

“Especially after what happened to us!” Todd raged.

Film Brain’s eyes tracked something they couldn’t see. He swallowed. “It looks like that instruction was cut from the code,” he said weakly.

“Sabotage?” Todd asked.

“Likely,” Film Brain agreed. “Either from an insider, or from someone much better than I am at this.”

Jaeris turned and tore back down the aisle. He skidded to a stop at the man with the hat’s coffin and bent over the life-support system.

“What are you doing?” Todd called. “You can’t bring someone out of cryostasis that fast; you’d kill them!”

“This one’s not in cryostasis, though, just hibersleep,” Jaeris shouted back. “I think I can wake him up.”

“Hurry!” Film Brain shrieked. “We can’t get to the ships in time to avoid the shock wave of it hitting atmosphere!”

“Wanna bet?” Todd muttered darkly. “I’ve shadow-walked that far before.”

Jaeris shook his head. “I’m not leaving these guys to die for real if I can help it,” he called back, hunting for the controls for the hibersleep inducer. After several passes, he found two small unlabeled dials attached to the life support readout. They were both all the way to the right. Slowly, he dialed them back to the left.

The readout changed. _Emerging from hibersleep, Standby,_ it read. As it blinked, the glass top of the coffin swung up on a hinge, exposing the man inside to the open air.

He coughed. 

Jaeris reached in and grabbed his hand. “Hurry, we need your help. I mean, I need your help, but right now everyone needs your help.”

The man in the hat blinked against the harsh lights. “Who are you,” he asked in a reedy voice, “and why are you in our sacred sleep chamber?”

“No time for that,” Jaeris urged him, “There’s a meteor headed for Zord and the security system won’t listen to us.”

“It’s programmed to take out meteors,” the guy in the hat said, sitting up. “That’s the whole reason for the laser net.”

“Well, it’s not working!” Film Brain hollered. “It’s waiting on instructions from someone who knows the codes, and none of us do!”

The Paladin blinked. “Situation, viewfinder!” he called at the ceiling. Immediately, a 3D holoprojection filled the top half of the room, clearly displaying the meteor and the security net.

“That would’ve been nice to have had earlier,” Todd groused.

Jaeris sucked at his teeth. Even on the projected scale, the meteor was moving awfully quickly. It would be crossing the laser net in seconds.

The man in the hat reacted similarly. “Security, activate, code: Brodsky, Liefeld, Miller!” he shouted. “Track any unauthorized UFO and fire!”

Film Brain relaxed a fraction of a second before the projection showed the meteor disappearing under a hail of laser beams.

The man in the hat put his hands on the edges of his coffin and tried to climb out. It took him two tries; he was still unsteady on his feet. “Now,” he said slowly, “who are you and why are you here?”

“I’m Jaeris of the Noble Order of Gunslingers, of Mellotron III,” Jaeris explained. 

“And I’m Todd of the Shadow Knights, of Twilight,” Todd added.

“I’m just a cyborg of no account,” Film Brain sighed.

“His name is Film Brain,” Jaeris filled in. “And I’m on a quest to unite the three nearly-empty orders of galactic warriors, to save my planet from Lord Critic. Although, it’s starting to look like we’re going to have to save everyone from the Nerd Emperor at the same time.”

“I’m Linkara, Paladin of Zord, of Futon II,” the Paladin said, sketching a small bow. “I don’t know if I can help you, though.” He gestured around them. “My elders saw the conflict between the Nerd Emperor and Lord Critic coming. When the Shadow Knights fell - and my apologies, Sir Todd, but we thought they had fallen one and all - we realized that taking sides with one against the other would mean the end of our order, too. Our intent was to withdraw, let the universe forget about us, and re-emerge to restore law and civility to the galaxy when the conflict was over.”

“I’m not asking you to take sides with one or the other,” Jaeris pointed out. “I’m just asking you to help me save my homeworld.”

“I’m the youngest of the order,” Linkara protested. “I don’t know if I can be much help, even if I thought abandoning my post here was okay, and I certainly don’t want to make Lord Critic an enemy of the Paladins.”

“I think he might be already,” Film Brain said quietly. “The meteor is clearly from the Nerd Emperor’s Gauss cannon, but someone had to hack into the security systems to let it through - and remember, General Phelous was the last one to visit before us.”

“Wait, what?” Linkara adjusted his glasses. “Why would they be working together against us?”

“And isn’t it an awfully big coincidence that the Emperor sends the meteor right when the last of all three orders are here?” Todd realized. “Jaeris, are you sure your prophesy is on the up-and-up? Could Lord Critic or the Nerd Emperor have planted it to have us all wiped out in one swoop?”

“I don’t think so,” Jaeris said. “Lise’s got a better than 80% hit rate for major prophesies. Interfering with a precog takes a lot more psi energy than I think either of them has, unless they have resources they haven’t used. It’s more likely that they had the hit on Zord planned for a while, and us showing up here just made the Emperor bump up his timeline.”

“But they hate each other,” Linkara argued. “The Critic’s whole goal is to unite this end of the galaxy to fight the Emperor off. Why would they work together to wipe us out?”

“Because they fear you,” Film Brain said. “Why do you think Lord Critic is spending years conquering Mellotron? It’s not politically or strategically important. He’s terrified of things he doesn’t understand - soulbonding, shadow-walking, the other psi disciplines you practice. He knows he can’t predict them, so he wants them out of the way. He thought he’d dealt with the Paladins politically, but maybe he second-guessed himself, or the generals talked him into leaking sensitive information hoping the Emperor would act on it.” He stopped and swallowed. “And I imagine the Nerd Emperor feels the same, or else he wouldn’t have made the Shadow Knights his first strike in Critic’s territory and Zord the second one, instead of Station Awesome and Phelous Station.”

Linkara stumbled in place; Jaeris grabbed his hand and led him to a chair shoved against the wall. “If what you’re saying is true,” Linkara whispered, “then all our preparations won’t save us. I don’t think the defense grid would hold up to multiple disintegrator cannons, if it came down to a direct assault.”

“That’s what I’ve been saying,” Jaeris agreed. “Just waiting it out to see whether Lord Critic or the Emperor wins is suicide. Your elders would never wake up.”

“They won’t wake up right now at any rate,” Linkara admitted, his nose wrinkling. “No one other than the Paladin Chancellor can bring the others out of cryostasis, and my turn to be Chancellor won’t happen for another -” He reached into his vest and looked at his pocket watch. “- Twenty-three years.”

“Then why wasn’t the Chancellor in your coffin?” Todd asked.

“Like I said,” Linkara explained, “the rest intended to sleep out the entire war. The man who was Chancellor when we went into stasis isn’t the one who technically holds the position now; it rotates every two years. I was in there because I was worried that some other crisis, something besides the two of them, might arise that needed our help.” He smiled sheepishly. “I wanted some other hero to be able to find at least one of us, if it became necessary. And here you are.”

“I’m not a hero,” Todd scoffed. “I’m a musician who happens to be able to shadow-walk. I didn’t earn this; it just happened.”

“You still completed your training,” Linkara objected. He squinted at the clasp that held on Todd’s cloak. “With honors, if I’m remembering my insignia correctly.”

“I didn’t say I sucked at it,” Todd replied. “I just said I didn’t ask for it.”

Jaeris clasped his hands in front of him. “So, how about it?” he asked. “Any chance of getting you to help?”

“If what your cyborg friend is saying is true, I don’t think I have much choice,” Linkara said, sweeping his cape back over his shoulders. “Helping preserve your order is the same as preserving mine.”

Jaeris smiled. “Great!” he said. “There’s just room enough for one more on my ship, so -”

Linkara burst out laughing. “Then we’ll park it in the docking bay on my ship.” He waited until Jaeris stopped blinking. “I’m not just any Paladin,” he continued, still grinning. “I may be the youngest member of the Paladin high council, but I’m still a member. Your quest just picked up its own battle cruiser.”

“Then let’s boost it,” Jaeris said, grateful that at least the first half of his quest was over.


End file.
